Wierd problem after installing a new motherboard...

[Electrofreak]

Ok well, I went and built my brother a computer for his birthday back in April. This week, he needed a new motherboard and so I picked one for him and he bought it. It is a Chaintech SPT800, a relatively inexpensive $55 motherboard. (By brother couldn't afford anything fancy.) It has all the features he needs, and Chaintech is a pretty well established motherboard manufacturer so I figured it would be a good deal.

Anyhow, it arrived in the mail from newegg today, and I went over to my stepmothers house to install it. I pulled out the old motherboard no problem, installed the RAM and CPU into the new mobo, switched the motherboard headers inside the case around to suit the new board, and screwed the sucker in. I connected the Radeon 9600 PRO that my brother has into the card, hooked up the IDEs, front panel switches and lights, and lastly, the power. I started it up and it posted.

Naturally, there were a few BIOS settings I had to mess with to make the machine work well (it has no floppy drive, so floppy seek off, etc), so I made my changes and started Windows 98 SE. It froze at the loading screen, which I'd somewhat expected, the motherboard having a new chipset and all. So, I loaded it into safe mode and it installed a series of basic drivers. Now the motherboard came with an installation CD, and I'd completely forgotten that Win 98 safe mode doesnt have CD support. Thus, I tried loading it up into normal mode once more, still no go. Figured I would copy some of the installation files onto a floppy and install them in safe mode, but I had also forgotten that the system had no floppy drive. I had to get it to load up into normal mode, and my brother had lost the Win 98 install disk long ago.

Desperate, I pulled a hard drive out of an old computer of my moms that contains Windows ME. I have a setup CD for it so I figured I could have it run the CD from command prompt, and copy the installation files over onto Win 98 drive, where I could install them manually while in safe mode. A clever idea, in my opinion. There arent any motherboard headers at the edge of the board where the IDE ports are located, so it tends to flex a bit as you push the IDEs in. Not the best design IMO. I noticed this as I was pushing in the IDE for the hard drive that contains ME, and it worried me a bit. I tried to be gentle but the IDE didn't want to go in smoothly and took a bit of pushing.

After installing the new drive, I started up the motherboard, and this is where things got nasty. The monitor gave me the "no signal" message, despite the fact that it had been working fine before. I checked the Radeon, everything was seated properly. I unplugged the ME drive, and still same problem. I installed an old Radeon 7000 I had into a PCI slot. Tested that, no change. I tried a different monitor, no change. It beeps as the BIOS starts up but I just can't get the monitor to get a damn signal.


A.D.D VERSION: Installed a new motherboard, Posted into BIOS fine, Windows 98 wouldn't boot, I connected a new IDE drive, (which may have damaged the mobo) and now it will no longer send a video signal to any video card / monitor I connect it to.

Specs of the system:

Intel P4 Celeron 2.4
1 x 512 stick of Kingston PC3200
ATI Radeon 9600 PRO
300w Antec Powersupply
20gb WD 7200 rpm ATA100 with Windows 98 SE installed (and setup disk is lost)

And of course the new Chaintech SPT800 "Summit" socket 478, with VIA PT800 + VT8237 chipsets, built-in Realtek AC '97 audio, SATA 150, ethernet, 400/533/800 FSB, 266/333/400 dual-channel DDR capability, and no, it doesn't have onboard video.

Anyone have any idea what might be causing this?

[Rbstr]

err... peculiar

if you put in an unformatted disk will it boot?

why did you not uninstall the old chipset frist, and Win 98 should not lock up when a new chipset is put in, thoguth AGP will be borked you jsut need to install the new drivers. I had to do it 3 times with win 98 on thsi machine before i got XP

A little bending in the MoBo is not bad, mine bends a bit, aslong as no cracks occur.

and unlug everyting and plug everything back in, i don't know how many times i have forgotten something, or not got it seated properly(you did it last time too).

[Electrofreak]

Yeah, I definately should have probably installed the new drivers first. I might go and switch it back to its old motherboard (sigh) and see if I can get it to start up.

Oh, and yeah, I forgot how much Windows 98 SE blows.

[Daleon]

Yes, 98 defintely blows. Especially if you can't even reinstall it, ugh.

Try resetting the cmos. Reseat the cpu/hsf. Pull out all pci cards. Use one stick of ram. Check ide controller for bent pins. Plug original HD back up. Etc.

[Electrofreak]

Yeah, did all that, finally got the video to work. Strangely, it was only after I pulled all the stuff off that motherboard, switched it back to the old one, was about to proclaim the new mobo broken, but ghetto-rigged it back up for a final test and it worked. Something apparently had been loose, though I'm certain I'd tested everything. In any case I managed to get Windows 98 to boot (that was a fun little 3-hour struggle), but the CD-ROM drive has been acting strangely. It wouldn't detect it at first, then during one boot (for some reason, it wasn't any different a boot than normal) it detected it. I attempted to install the drivers from the mobo disk but every time I ran the setup it gave me a " Warning: Registry Error. Reboot the Computer ." Paranoid that the CD-ROM drive would give out on me again, I then copied all the files from the mobo drivers disk to the hard drive; and its a good thing I did because the tempremental thing hasn't detected the CD-ROM drive since. Its strange because it detects it in BIOS, but not in Windows, despite my scans for new hardware.

In any case, I try to run the setup files that I'd managed to download and it still gives me that damn Registry Error every single time. I've ran Registry Mechanic and Regclean and no changes. I've attempted to manually install some of the drivers, but it always asks for drivers on the Windows 98 CD that I don't have. With no working USB or LAN drivers I can't get onto the internet for alternate drivers. With no floppy drive, Windows 98 setup CD or a working CD-ROM drive in that machine I've also got my hands tied. I'm going to dig up a spare floppy I have at this house and try installing it tomorrow, as well as throwing a bunch of installation onto one of my hard drives I'll carry over to that house tomorrow and install as a slave. Hopefully I can get SOMETHING to install.

I've been workin on the damn thing for about 8 hours now, and its just been Murphy hitting me over the head over and over. Whenever I figure something out and go to fix a problem, something else fails to prevent it. Driving me insane. Anyhow I'm going to get some sleep, hopefully the hard drive with installation files thing I'm going to do in the morning will solve this problem for once and for all. God, if this was Win XP, I would have solved this thing hours ago. (At least it has friggin CD-ROM support in safe mode for christs sake)

[Daleon]

If you can't get a copy of winxp.... d/l a image of Gentoo, Mandrake, or some other distro that is free and welcome your step brother to the wonderful world of free OS's. Maybe lindows?

[Rbstr]

hmm, you may have to format

[Electrofreak]

Bleh, my brother really wants the best OS for gaming, which really is Windows. Plus hes not a huge tech-head, so an alternative OS probably isn't the best choice for him.

As for formatting, sure, would love to, problem is that missing Windows 98 setup CD.

[MattxMosh]

This should teach you one thing electro, PLUG ONE THING IN AT A TIME.

It took me far too long to get it through my thick skull to try bit buy bit, instead of throwing the whole thing together.

Windows 98 is the worst in recognizing hardware, Ive seen it kill itself over and over, especially with newer shit.

You can probably find a windows 98 disk at a local shop for like cents on the dollar, or quid on a pound ruble euro or whatever you people call money. Although Windows 98 is a waste of time.

Go for the student discount on XP.

[Electrofreak]

I was trying to get it all done before I had to go to work, so yeah, I admit I did a few things sloppy. Ironically enough, it only worked when I did a quick ghetto-rig of the new mobo (with the mobo sitting on top of my case laid on its side, lying on top of an anti-static bag :p )

Normally I'd just convince my stepmother that Windows XP is the answer to all the problems, but she has her own laptop and doesn't concern herself with anything that isn't her own. Damn nazi woman. Ah well, I'm going to try to get the VIA drivers installed and then we'll see about upgrading to an OS that isn't so unstable and tempermental. Speaking of which, the Windows 98 registry had nearly 300 registry errors in it. After I get it all working I might as well just find a Windows setup CD somewhere and format the damn thing.

[Rbstr]

ah ther lies the problem a Via chipset...tisk...tisk there is atleast on thing intel does right, there Chipsets beat out all competition thoguth sometimes the CPU isn't worth all that much.

[Electrofreak]

Actually, VIA chipsets aren't too bad Rbstr. I prefer them over Intel chipsets to be honest. I'd rather have nVidia but VIA offers much more functionality for the price.

[Daleon]

It depends on how old the mb is. Anything older than 2 years is an extremely crappy via chipset for most part. I doubt I'll ever really go back to them. I really hate their all one in drivers. To many times I built a perfectly clean new system and windows was working great only to load those things and see it all fall apart.

[Electrofreak]

Its got an 800 chipset, and its a new mobo (recently released). Yeah I know VIA used to have terrible chips but they seemed to have cleaned up their act a bit recently.